Adding a Software Update Point to a Secondary Site (for those who already know how to add it to the primary site!)

This is something I’ve meant to get round to writing about for months as the first time I did this I couldn’t find any direct answers in the multitude of blogs I read about it.

On the face of things, installing WSUS/SUP on a secondary site sounds pretty straightforward if you’re used to adding them to a primary site but when you start it soon becomes clear there are a few unanswered questions which start to materialise. It’s important to first consider whether a SUP is even required for the secondary site: remember, the update packages will be present anyway. The secondary site SUP is really only there for scanning purposes and to relieve associated traffic which is really quite minimal. Assuming you are over this and need it anyway then here are a few other things to consider, some of which have changed since CM2007.

Since CM2012, there is now a DB on the secondary site so should we be installing to that?

WSUS Content?

How does it interact with the Primary SUP?

This blog is only intended to answer one or two questions you might have as regards specifics of installing on a secondary site and there are plenty of answers out there for general installation. In short, the SUP on the secondary site is a secondary SUP and when you install it ConfigMgr will actually take care of marrying it up to the Primary SUP.

So the high level tasks are as follows:

Install the pre-req’s for a Software Update Point. I thoroughly recommend Nickalaj A’s PreRequisite Tool for this job, see https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/ConfigMgr-2012-R2-e52919cd. I must confess this has made me lazy and I barely remember what the pre-reqs are these days but to be honest I don’t need to with this.

Install the database on the secondary site SQL instance. Best practice is to have separate instances but I’ll leave that to you. Personally I don’t find there is any real performance issues using the same instance. Also, as an aside, if you have full SQL on the primary, (and you will) then I don’t really see why you wouldn’t use it on the secondary. Why use SQL Express when the licence is free for the full version? Just my opinion though.

WSUS Content should always be local. It’s a requirement to specify this during installation but it’s not really used when part of a SUP in ConfigMgr.

Finally, after WSUS installation, add the SUP role to the site. ConfigMgr will take care of the rest. Click on the secondary site under the Sites node, and click the SUP under the site component properties to check the sync status. It should be greyed out because SCCM has recognised it as a child of the primary SUP.